The Effects of Adaptation on Neural Coding by Primary Sensory Interneurons
in the Cricket cercal system.
Clague, Heather, Fr[acute]ed[acute]eric Theunissen and John P. Miller.
Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, University of California,
Berkeley, Ca. 94720.APStracts 3:0241N, 1996.
ABSTRACnT
Methods of stochastic systems analysis were applied to examine the effect of
adaptation on frequency encoding by two functionally identical primary
interneurons of the cricket cercal system. Stimulus reconstructions were
obtained from a linear filtering transformation of spike trains elicited in
response to bursts of broadband white noise air current stimuli (5-400 Hz).
Each linear reconstruction was compared to the actual stimulus in the
frequency domain to obtain a measure of waveform coding accuracy as a function
of frequency. The term adaptation in this paper refers to the decrease in
firing rate of a cell after the onset or increase in power of a white noise
stimulus. The increase in firing rate after stimulus offset or decrease in
stimulus power is assumed to be a complementary aspect of the same phenomenon.
As the spike rate decreased during the course of adaptation, the total amount
of information carried about the velocity waveform of the stimulus also
decreased. The quality of coding of frequencies between 70-400 Hz decreased
dramatically. The quality of coding of frequencies between 5-70 Hz decreased
only slightly or even increased in some cases. The disproportionate loss of
information about the higher frequencies could be attributed in part to the
more rapid loss of spikes correlated with high frequency stimulus components
than of spikes correlated with low frequency components. An increase in the
responsiveness of a cell to frequencies above 70 Hz was correlated with a
decrease in the ability of that cell to encode frequencies in the 5-70 Hz
range. This non-linear property could explain the improvement seen in some
cases in the coding accuracy of frequencies between 5-70 Hz during the course
of adaptation. Waveform coding properties were also characterized for fully
adapted neurons at several stimulus intensities. The changes in coding
observed through the course of adaptation were similar in nature to those
found across stimulus powers. These changes could largely be accounted for by
a change in neural sensitivity. The effect of adaptation on the coding of
stimulus power was examined by measuring the response curves to steps in
stimulus power before and after exposure to an adapting stimulus. Adaptation
caused a loss of information about the mean stimulus power, but did not cause
any improvement in the coding of changes in stimulus power. The unadapted
response of the cells did not show any saturation even at the highest powers
used in these experiments.

Received 13 February 1996; accepted in final form 19 September 1996.
APS Manuscript Number J116-6.
Article publication pending J. Neurophysiol.
ISSN 1080-4757 Copyright 1996 The American Physiological Society.
Published in APStracts on 5 November 1996